Well on our way to completing our
contract obligation fulfillment, we decided we shouldn’t go all the way until
we were completely ready- it was time to do the home study. We found an agency
recommended by our adoption agency and who also had video-ography testimonials
on their website. Now, you should know that the home study will likely be one
of the hardest things you will go through as adoptive parents, but it is so
worth it! Home studies aren’t about your home, per say, so don’t invest in
baby-proofing your house just yet! You don’t need to scrub your home from
ceiling to floor or put on a façade for your social worker. The home study is
all about education, preparation, and outlining all the aspects of your lives
that you really need to get together before having a child. I personally think
anyone having a baby, through any means, should be required to do a home study-
we would sure have a different breed of parents out there…
We had our initial meeting with
the social worker who went over all the fees and paperwork with us and she told
us to give her a head’s up when we got about half way through. The file was
about a ½ inch thick of paperwork when we first began. Oscar and I poured
ourselves out onto those pages and pages of questions and actually took the
opportunity to identify with deep seeded emotions once we wrote them down. We
set up life insurance policies, took online classes, and had much needed
physicals. We seemed to breeze through just about everything except the Q&A
pages.
When the questions became more in
depth, we struggled. We decided the best way to power through it was to immerse
ourselves in what we were trying to accomplish. We took the day and headed out
to Lake Tahoe. We found a beautiful day/beach park and sat ourselves in a
picnic area that was primarily filled with a large Latino family. There were
kids running around all over the place, dads/uncles snoozing in the shade,
moms/aunts making food and talking about the lazy men… it was perfect!
Once we completed the paperwork,
it ended up being more like one inch thick! We called our social worker and
scheduled our next meeting. She joined us in our home for a little over 2 hours
one evening. We all went over the information we submitted together and then
each had one-on-one time with her. I cannot stress to you enough how absolutely
wonderful The Family Network and their staff are! From day one, we felt so
comfortable, understood, and encouraged by our social worker. Our experience
with this agency was by and large the best “business” part of our journey!
NOTE: The benefit of having your
home study done is that you are prepared! If you are called to a “stork drop”
or emergency situation, you are already cleared and the paperwork is already
done. The downside to home studies is that they are only good for one year
after the report is completed. If you end up waiting over a year until you have
a baby placed with you, you will have to complete the paperwork and pay the
fees again. We took the risk and it paid off!
With our home study done, funds
raised from our yard sale, it was time for us to become fully contracted with
our adoption agency. We handed off our final payment to the agency on our 4th
wedding anniversary- we thought it might be a good luck charm! So exciting!
We immediately started working on
our profile. This was so much fun for me as I got to create it all, from
scratch, on my computer; I loved it! I quickly discovered that I hold the
camera far too often when we go on trips and such as there were hardly any
pictures of just me to include in the profile. We immediately started taking
pictures wherever we could and I gladly handed off the camera. We took the
opportunity to write a page about one another and throw in some creative and
unique pages that highlighted some of our favorite things and places. We asked
for friends and family members to contribute letters to potential birthmothers for
some of the back pages. With each contribution, I included a picture of the
contributor with one (or both) of us. It turned out really great!
I took our first draft (which was
absolutely perfect in my mind) to our agency for their weigh in. They really
liked the uniqueness, but felt my 20 pages (front and back) were too much and
that I might actually scare off some potential birthparents. They said there
were times that they knew off where a birthmother would put a hefty profile in
a “maybe” pile rather than reading all the way through it, especially if she
was close to the end of the pregnancy and was feeling the pressure of making a
choice. I could see where they were coming from, but it was hard to cut out 4
pages. We kept the original with all the pages and we are so glad we did!
Some helpful hints when making
your profile:
- Include recent pictures. For women who dye their hair frequently (like me), try to include as close to the same color as possible as to not confuse a birthparent.
- Print a nice picture of yourself on the front cover and then actually paste a glossy of the picture on top of it. A birthparent is able to take your picture and put it on their refrigerator and your picture remains on the profile as well. (We did this on the front and back cover of our profile for a little added extra!)
- Be positive and creative. Hopefully your adoption agency will provide you with some sample copies of profiles, but don’t follow them exactly. You want to stand out amongst the rest.
- Be yourselves! Often times, birthparents will connect one of their values, hobbies, or traits with your own and this is a tie that will happen on its own- you will have no control over it. For example, maybe the birthparents really like camping and want their child to grow up in a family that also likes to go camping. If you think about it, the more you have in common in the beginning, the more you will have to talk about throughout your child’s life.
- Keep
a copy for your coffee table so you can show your friends and family.
After we gave our 50 copies of
our profile to the adoption agency, and all we could do then was hurry up and wait!
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